ather to indulge in
comparative solitude his own reflections, than to admire those singular
beauties of nature and art which the magnificence of Leicester had there
assembled. The greater part of the persons of condition had left the
Castle for the present, to form part of the Earl's cavalcade; others,
who remained behind, were on the battlements, outer walls, and towers,
eager to view the splendid spectacle of the royal entry. The garden,
therefore, while every other part of the Castle resounded with the human
voice, was silent but for the whispering of the leaves, the emulous
warbling of the tenants of a large aviary with their happier companions
who remained denizens of the free air, and the plashing of the
fountains, which, forced into the air from sculptures of fatastic and
grotesque forms, fell down with ceaseless sound into the great basins of
Italian marble.

The melancholy thoughts of Tressilian cast a gloomy shade on all the
objects with which he was surrounded. He compared the magnificent scenes
which he here traversed with the deep woodland and wild moorland which
surrounded Lidcote Hall, and the image of Amy Robsart glided like a
phantom through every landscape which his imagination summoned up.
Nothing is perhaps more dangerous to the future happiness of men of deep
thought and retired habits than the entertaining an early, long, and
unfortunate attachment. It frequently sinks so deep into the mind that
it becomes their dream by night and their vision by day--mixes itself
with every source of interest and enjoyment; and when blighted and
withered by final disappointment, it seems as if the springs of the
heart were dried up along with it. This aching of the heart, this
languishing after a shadow which has lost all the gaiety of its
colouring, this dwelling on the remembrance of a dream from which
we have been long roughly awakened, is the weakness of a gentle and
generous heart, and it was that of Tressilian.

He himself at length became sensible of the necessity of forcing other
objects upon his mind; and for this purpose he left the Pleasance,
in order to mingle with the noisy crowd upon the walls, and view the
preparation for the pageants. But as he left the garden, and heard the
busy hum, mixed with music and laughter, which floated around him, he
felt an uncontrollable reluctance to mix with society whose feelings
were in a tone so different from his own, and resolved, instead of doing
so, to retire